Parts sale sparked seizure of F-14s

As military technicians dismantled the fighters Wednesday at airports in Chino and Victorville, federal officials said the investigation was continuing and no criminal charges had yet been filed.

The F-14 Tomcats, retired from military service, were supposed to have been scrapped in the late 1990s. Instead, a Navy official at the Naval Air Station at Point Mugu "improperly" approved the sale of three jet fighters in 1999 to an unauthorized Oxnard scrap company for $4,000 or less apiece, according to a federal affidavit. A fourth plane ended up in the hands of the producers of the TV drama "JAG," who used it as a prop, according to federal court records.

"These planes were junk," said Paul Rafferty, the attorney for Yanks Air Museum at Chino Airport, which bought three of the planes from a middleman for $50,000 in 1999 and still owns two of the aircraft.

The planes have been stripped of their engines, navigational equipment and virtually every other piece of hardware necessary to get the planes off the ground, he said.

Still, Rafferty said, federal agents told him the planes were being seized as "evidence" in a criminal investigation into the military's original sale of the planes.

Rick Gwin, special agent in charge of the Western field office of the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, declined to comment on the investigation, saying only that the jets never should have been sold.

"These were warplanes in the hands of private individuals," Gwin said. "We took them back because they were

The Pentagon, under pressure from Congress, in January suspended sales of thousands of spare parts from its recently retired F-14 fleet after criticism that the parts could be transferred to Iran.

Iran is the only country that still has an active F-14 program. It bought the jets from the U.S. in the 1970s when Iran was an ally.

The seizure of the F-14s comes when the Bush administration is grappling with Iran, which has rebuffed diplomatic efforts to suspend uranium enrichment for its nuclear program. President Bush has sent warships near the Persian Gulf country, and at the same time the United States has agreed to join high-level diplomatic talks with Iraq, Iran and Syria.